There is a saying in sports that true athletes rise to the level of their competition.

This weekend, the Penn State women's indoor track and field team will undoubtedly face its toughest competition of the year at the Penn State National Meet at noon today and at 9:15 a.m. tomorrow at the Multi-Sport Facility. In recent years, this meet has gained national notoriety for the quality of athletes who enter the competition. In this atmosphere, the Lions will step onto the national stage this weekend against powerhouses such as defending NCAA indoor champs Tennessee and some of the top unattached track athletes in the world. This meet will be a considerable difference from the two earlier, low-key meets the Lions have hosted.

"We're pulling in some great teams, and the competition is going to be pretty outstanding, so we've got to kind of shift gears with that and get after it this weekend," Penn State women's track and field coach Beth Alford-Sullivan said.

Along with Tennessee comes Miami (Fl.), which finished third in the NCAA indoor championships last year. Both Tennessee and Miami boast a 4x400-meter relay team ranked in the top 12 in the nation. These two teams, along with Virginia Tech and Penn State, have achieved NCAA qualifying times in this event, and all four will be ready to go head-to-head this weekend in an early championship preview.

Former Lion Connie Moore, who graduated in 2004, will be in attendance to defend her current Penn State records in the 60-meter and the 200-meter races. Moore was an 11-time all-American at Penn State and a member of the United States Olympic team in 2004. Now a professional for Nike, she will be running against her former teammates.

"We don't look at her like she's a pro athlete coming in. It's more of a Connie Moore's coming in, we'll see her, and when the track meet's over we'll go hang out with her type of thing," sophomore sprinter Gayle Hunter said.

Hunter will be competing against some of the best long jumpers in the world this weekend. She will be challenged by Nike-sponsored jumper Tianna Madison, who won the World Championship in Helsinki, Finland, this past summer for the United States and Viktoriya Rybalko, also unattached, who has the best jump in the world this year. All-American Tabia Charles from Miami will also give Hunter a challenge.

In the women's 20-pound weight throw, NCAA qualifier Jen Leatherman, who is currently ranked fifth in the nation in the event, will be opposed by the nation's second-ranked thrower Tamara Burns from Virginia Tech. Competitor Ariel Brooks from Tennessee has also thrown impressively this season. Two of the nation's premier distance programs, Georgetown and Villanova, will also be at the meet. The 3,000-meter race will feature Penn State's Molly Landreth against Villanova's Maria Muncan and other top performers from these schools. Alford-Sullivan said she expects it to be an outstanding race.

With this intense competition travelling to Happy Valley, the team is looking forward to the challenge.

"We're just pumped up to be running against them and see where we stand against their caliber," Hunter said. "If we can hang with them now, then when nationals time comes around, hopefully we'll place somewhere in there."